


The Scientist

by asqualidphantasmagoriaofbreath



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Vulnerability, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asqualidphantasmagoriaofbreath/pseuds/asqualidphantasmagoriaofbreath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Screwing his eyes shut and wrenching them back open, raindrops clinging to his lashes and brows, his hands completely devoid of feeling, he trudged back toward Baker Street. His heart felt like it was bound by barbed wire, causing deeper wounds with every beat. Waning anger and disbelief still lingered in his skull and mouth.<br/>Inspired by "The Scientist" by Coldplay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Come Up To Meet You

 Precipitation poured relentlessly from the grumpy clouds above John Watson, running him beneath the overhangs of buildings and through London's winding alleys as he returned to his flat from a long fifteen hours of work. There had been what seemed like an explosion of accidents and injuries in the past week, usually due to the unpredictable weather patterns. One moment, the sun would be glancing through fluffy clouds, reflecting off the Thames, but the next, pounding rain and roaring thunder with lightning for company. John had been kept late, dealing with the filling out of prescriptions, stitching of cuts, examining of skulls, and the odd man who wasn't sure if he'd cracked his skull open and thought gray matter was seeping out (it had just been a bad concussion and a bit of jam on the back of his head).

A growl of thunder sounded above John's head. He rushed along the sidewalks, mentally cursing himself for not catching a cab while he had the chance. Socks sliding around in his shoes, splashing into puddles, he reached Baker Street and sprinted the final stretch to the front door of his flat. Mrs. Hudson, _Bless her_ , John thought, was waiting for him with a towel.

“John, dear,” she said fondly. “I'll come up with tea in a few minutes. Dry yourself off and warm up, I don't want you catching cold.”

He approached the stairs, jogging up even though his bad leg was screaming in pain. His limp had been back for a very long time. John kept active, at first thinking it would keep his limp at bay, but found it yielded results he hadn't wanted. Peering up through his wet eyelashes while fiddling in his dry inner pocket for his key, he stopped dead as he saw that the door to 221B was already open. The doorway was occupied by a figure too familiar to John, slender and swathed in a long black coat, wild curls springing around sharp cheekbones and piercing eyes, a full mouth and pale skin. With a tilt of the curly head, verdigris fell on cobalt with an intensity John had not felt in what seemed to be a century. John's stomach dropped and a bit of bile rose in his throat as the man briefly averted his gaze. Fear, anger, and crushing sadness pressed on his chest.

The man in the doorway turned to look at the doctor, his eyes sad but slightly hopeful, meeting the dark blue stare of the man frozen on the steps. His breath slowed, trying to calm himself down. He'd missed him so much. Every single one of his bones ached, his eyelids feeling like elephants, but he needed John more than anything.

“John—,” he said, but John had run from the dark staircase, the door swinging behind him as he bursted into the street, where the rain was still falling heavily. The man from the doorway followed him.

John was nowhere in sight when the man peered around. He knew where the doctor had gone, but did not follow. Realizing with a stab of anguish that John probably didn't want to see him at the moment—or ever, he thought—and that he probably gave him a right scare, just showing up like that. Cursing his impulse, he returned inside the building. Mrs. Hudson looked at him sadly.

“Don't worry, Sherlock. He'll come back around. Go back upstairs, wait for him, sweetheart. Don't set anything on fire while you're at it.”

***

John walked the labyrinthine alleys quickly, trying to calm down. His leg was protesting profusely, but he ignored it.

_How could he have come back? He was dead on the ground, I saw him, I checked his pulse, he was dead. I attended his funeral service. For an entire three years, I visited his grave, mourned him._

Thoughts whirled in his head dizzyingly, confusion and sorrow blinding him. He clenched and unclenched his fists, short nails digging into his palms. All the things he'd done to suppress the feelings of guilt— _I could have stopped him, he could still be alive—_ and pain of loss, could have been prevented if he had known Sherlock was alive. He acted irrationally and dangerously to try and fill, or at least be distracted from, the hole in his life that Sherlock had torn.

Frowning, John limped through Hyde Park in the rain, now freezing cold and breaching numbness. Anger heated his chest and leaped into his throat. Swallowing hard, he tried to begin to collect himself. Jealousy, hatred, relief, and happiness all brewed inside his stomach, filling him with fumes of emotions he couldn't put a name to.

All that time he'd been gone, John had promised he would stay as strong as his mental stability could permit. He'd begun to break the moment Sherlock had said goodbye on the roof of St Bart's. It had been harder and harder to keep himself glued together as time went on, and he felt himself slipping often. He'd set out two cups of tea instead of one, ask the empty air if the milk was still good, waiting for that brilliant man to move like a whirlwind and pick him up from all the debris around his body. Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade were the only reason that John was still really alive. Lestrade had coaxed him into a hobby, which turned out to be exercising. Mrs. Hudson made him eat. No matter what they said, though, no one seemed to be able to read John, connect with him. John had felt for Sherlock in a way no one else seemed to. He grieved differently.

Screwing his eyes shut and wrenching them back open, raindrops clinging to his lashes and brows, his hands completely devoid of feeling, he trudged back toward Baker Street, but took the scenic route. His heart felt like it was bound by barbed wire, causing deeper wounds with every beat. Waning anger and disbelief still lingered in his skull and mouth.

The streets were near empty, aside from a few rocketing taxis skidding across the wet pavement. He shuddered briefly as thunder rolled above him, reminding him of the tumultuous nights he couldn't sleep, couldn't wake, couldn't move, couldn't do anything but feel loss and guilt and wretched pain. If John could have convinced him in their short conversation in Sherlock's last minute, if he had said the right words, if he hadn't been such a prick and been able to say what he meant, the ifs were endless and stretched on for lightyears in John's barricaded brain.

Nothing had seemed right. Nothing had _been_ right. Not since he... _left, I suppose_ , thought John.

 _Left seems like an okay word for things._ Left. But he was back now. He was inside the flat. Alive. Breathing oxygen, his heart beating, his exceptional brain deducing. He was real, really truly full of life and John was outside, trying to avoid seeing him.

John took a deep breath as he turned on to Baker Street, walking significantly more slowly than he was before. Anxiety gripped his throat and dried his tongue. An itch near his elbow distracted him, moving along at a snail's pace. _Dull_ , he would have said.

_Dull. Is that how he'll think of me now? An average man, working at the clinic? Not a crime-solver, not a consulting detective's special blogger, not anyone's anything. Just an ex army doctor who couldn't handle his best friend's demise._

***

Sherlock Holmes had entered the flat about an hour before John arrived. Mrs. Hudson had brandished a fireplace poker at the prospect of an intruder, but upon discovering it was Sherlock, back from the dead, she screamed ( _powerful lungs on that woman_ , Sherlock had thought) and gave him a hard slap in the face. He calmly explained the situation, how he had survived, how he had hunted the assassins gunning for Greg, Mrs. Hudson, and John, how he dismantled Jim Moriarty's web and crushed the remains with the heel of his shoe.

His explanations and responses to Mrs. Hudson's questions were simple equations that bounced out of his mouth, calculated on trains and during dark nights huddled in the doorways of strangers. Sherlock was more focused on the flat, the way he remembered it, how different it was. He had taken his shoes off and was pacing the floor, the soles of his feet and the pads of his toes full of nostalgia, remembering the creaky spots and tea spills. The place had seemed dimmer, less full of life, certainly less cluttered. John had let his books be ordered in a casual disarray on the shelves (which Sherlock promptly fixed as he described to Mrs. Hudson how Molly aided him in his return to the world of the living), and various newspapers lay unfolded and spread on the coffee table.

He had not expected John to remain living here. Under the belief that he would move out due to a sentimental gesture of which Sherlock was unable to determine—be it a girlfriend or wife or Harry—Sherlock had forced Mycroft to agree to take care of the flat in case John left, to pay the rent, to make sure it was still there in the possibility that he may come back alive and reunite with John. _Still full of surprises_ , Sherlock's lip quirked upward. However, his ghost of a smile departed as quickly as it had arrived as he began to feel how un-John the place was. He had not felt so before, because there were clear signs that John lived there, lived and breathed and drank tea and grumbled when he got up to take a piss in the morning, but there was no trace of John and his John-ness. Yes, his belongings were present, but the room was cold, blank, although the décor had remained the same, bullet holes and all. As if both Sherlock and John had left.

***

John Watson limped up the stairs a second time. Rain dripped from his hair into his eyes, water clinging to his short eyelashes. Anticipation sat heavy in his chest, and he hesitated to push the slightly ajar door to 221B open. He clenched and unclenched his left fist a few times before gathering his wits and placing a hand to the wood of the door. The flat seemed cleaner now than when he had left it that morning. The bookcase was reorganized (alphabetically, John noticed), the afghan folded on his chair, newspapers cleared off the coffee table. Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock were seated at the kitchen table, which had long been free of the detective's chaotic—but apparently, methodical—experiments, he realized as he stepped forward into the living room.

“John, dear,” Mrs. Hudson said, almost chiding, rising from her seat to fuss over his rather waterlogged state, but John offered an empty smile and gestured for her to sit back down.

“I'm fine,” he said, surprised at the way his voice had become so expressionless when he was battling emotional havoc. “I'm just going to change, and I'll be right back.”

He was very careful not to meet the pair of wide eyes staring intently at him, as if begging him to notice the prescence that had, until recently, deserted the apartment. Letting a small stream of air pass through his thin and chapped lips as he turned, John headed to his bedroom to exchange his wet clothing.  


	2. Tell You I'm Sorry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reunion of detective and blogger.

The amount of time John took to change into dry clothes might as well have been three years to the man waiting in his kitchen. Sherlock's insides twisted as he wondered how John would react to what he had to say. He would certainly be angry, perhaps punch him in the face. The detective wasn't sure, and the doubt resting in his cranial tissue gnawed at the back of his eyes. Mrs. Hudson was waiting for John to come back as well, and she was going to sit in with them while Sherlock justified his actions, under the impression that John wouldn't hurt Sherlock if she was in the room. This was clear in the way her fingers tapped on the edge of the table—anxious—and how her eyes kept flicking to her phone (in the situation that he and John would physically fight, she would likely call Lestrade or just the police, she would yell at them for a few moments before setting her phalanges on the numbers).  
John re-entered the room, still slightly damp. He smelled of disinfectant (from the clinic? No, that would have washed out in the rain. Bathroom, then, must have spilled something) and his hands were still, not trembling, not clenched into fists. He glanced at Sherlock briefly, and quickly looked away when he made eye contact.  
“John,” was all Sherlock could think to say. The cold, almost clinical sense of his explanation to Mrs. Hudson did not appear to work for this current situation. John deserved something real, beyond detached terms and a monotonous tone. But Sherlock could not find it in himself to muster that. In the time that he was gone, feelings were a barrier between him and the things he needed to do. While it was emotion that sparked his motives, that gave him something to ponder on moonless nights, he never let it go past the threshold of his mind for fear it would cause a distraction, something that could never be put back into place.  
“I'm going to put on the tea downstairs, I'll be back soon, boys. Behave,” Mrs. Hudson added, almost as an afterthought, but she knew her boys and the little tussles they tended to find themselves in.  
She departed the room quickly, even with that hip of hers, and John found himself drowning in the ocean of stark silence surrounding him and Sherlock. The air between the two men was stagnant, too full of three years worth of dust and regrets and sadness. John felt as though his eyes were too heavy to move from where they were transfixed, a muddy scuff on the floor from what must have been his shoe as he walked in, unable to peek at the man staring intently at the same mark.  
“I'm sorry,” John murmured, seeming as though he was addressing the mud. Sherlock's eyes shot up and scanned John's face, who appeared to be surprised that he had spoken at all.  
“I am too,” Sherlock softly replied. “Sorry, I mean. Very much so.”  
There was no noise emanating from Mrs. Hudson's kitchen downstairs. Sherlock knew she was listening for raised voices, for the crash of a body felled by a blow. She wanted her boys to get along, to be the detective and blogger duo once more.  
“Does Mycroft know you're here?” John queried, soft at first, but building to normal volume. He still studied the floor.  
Sherlock scoffed lightly. “Of course he does,” he affirmed. “As you know, hardly anything slips beneath his beak.”  
A flicker of warmth passed through John's eyes and pulled the corner of his mouth. John sat across from Sherlock at the battered table, tearing his gaze from the smear on the floor. He moved his attentions to the scratches, dents, and acid marks on the surface of the table. This was strange to John, how they were seated. In their time together, they rarely sat together here, and usually ate in the parlor. This seemed too formal, unnatural, forced.  
“So, care to explain what's been going on? You know, since you're apparently not...” The last words stuck in John's throat like cough syrup.  
“Yes, yes of course. On the roof, Moriarty shot himself in the head. He had revealed by accident that if he spoke a certain word, it would call off the assassins gunning for you, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade. He realized his mistake, and killed himself in order to prevent himself from activating the fail-safe, and to prevent me from figuring it out. Jim Moriarty is the corpse in my coffin. If I had not jumped, the snipers trained on you would have had your brain matter spattering the streets. As long as I posed no threat to them, they would have no reason to kill you.  
“Molly assisted me in the jump in the sense that she taught me how to fall. Had I wanted to die, I would have jumped head first. However, I jumped feet first, and my body took the brunt of the fall. I escaped with a few broken ribs and some fractures here and there, trivial matters. The homeless network surrounded me as soon as I hit the ground, and they applied some blood supplied by Molly to the scene. The bicyclist that hit you as you were crossing the road was also one of the homeless network, meant to deter you as my stage was being set. I had kept a rubber ball under my arm, an old trick surely you know of, effectively making it appear as though I had no pulse. Molly instructed the hospital employees that lifted me onto the stretcher, and made sure you did not have enough time to realize that I was alive.  
“These past three years have been spent dismantling Moriarty's work. His men, stationed around the world, are now either dead or nearly so. I hunted down the assassins, and you are safe now.” Sherlock breathlessly articulated every word, studying John's face as he spoke.  
The dull fluorescent lights did not take kindly to John's complexion, and his once slightly tanned face appeared peaky, the lines in his face deeper, the bruise-like crescents beneath his eyes darkening the slate blue of his irises. Sherlock faintly wondered if it was simply the lights, but in his gut knew that it wasn't. John's mouth was pressed in a hard line, twitching minutely at the mentions of Sherlock's injuries. His eyes still avoided Sherlock's pointedly, as though he was scared or nervous—Sherlock's heart sank into his stomach—and they were scrutinizing the surface of the table.  
“And you didn't tell me that you were alive?” John mumbled, his voice slightly muffled by his hand sweeping over his tired face.  
Sherlock didn't know how to respond; the answer was quite obvious.  
“You didn't think that you could tell me and I could help you? That was so stupidly dangerous, going off to god knows where to kill people out on your own. You were alive and I was just sitting here, stuck in the flat, going to the clinic every day, mourn—” John cut himself off and sighed deeply before continuing. “I was living the most boring, mundane life I never hoped I'd lead. You left me behind.” Anger had crept into John's tone, but he never raised his voice. John was appalled, relieved, full of rage, and the impossible man in front of him was the cause of it all.  
“I'm sorry, John—”  
“I know you are. But a bit of warning or something would have been nice.”  
“Bringing you with me was not an option. For my death to be believable, your grief had to be real. You had to carry on with your life without me just in case you were being watched. The mission was far too dangerous. It would be highly unsatisfactory to have you hurt. While there were times that your company would have been paramount, I needed to keep you safe here.”  
John noted the places in Sherlock's voice where his cool mask wore thin. He understood why Sherlock left, the things he must have done, his loneliness. He only wished he could have been with him, even if it was not possible.  
“Thank you.”  
Surveying the good doctor's face, Sherlock took in the damage their time apart had done. His limp was undeniably back, which is something he had anticipated and attempted to counter by exercise, which turned into a hobby. Clearly, the exercise had been Lestrade's idea. Few encounters outside of work. No dates, which was surprising. Sherlock had expected John to have a steady girlfriend, to even be married by the time he came back, possibly with children. John's face was much thinner, borderline gaunt, his hair slightly more gray but still overwhelmed by dark honey. Met with Molly a month ago—unexpected run-in at Tesco. Sherlock filed away the information he collected and waited to deduce the rest later. They had time now. Lots of time.  
John's eyes watched Sherlock carefully, for the first moment since their meeting in the doorway.  
“You're doing the thing, again. I know that look. You're deducing.”  
His response was a blank stare.  
“Out with it then.” John steeled himself, building an imaginary steel wall around the surface of his skin, tight around his neck and chest.  
“You don't want me to,” he replied quietly. “So I won't.” 

***

Stillness consumed the space around the detective and doctor, but was shortly interrupted by a bustling on the stairs. It was Mrs. Hudson, coming up with the tea at last. As she approached the kitchen with a happy “yoo hoo!”, they composed themselves, trying to look as though they had a successful and joyous reunion instead of an awkward one. Sherlock sculpted a half smile and a softness around his eyes, whereas John grinned and kindled a false spark in his pupils.  
“Oh, it's so wonderful to have you back, Sherlock,” Mrs. Hudson cooed as she set the tea tray on the table. “I'm sorry this took so long, I needed to take an herbal relaxer for my hip.”  
John and Sherlock exchanged a look. A flicker of hazy comfort passed through John's head as Sherlock's mouth twitched in light amusement.  
“Actually, Mrs. Hudson, I'm going to turn in for the night. It was a long day at work. Thank you anway.” John rose from the table with a stiffness in his shin, and offered a friendly glance with her. She nodded.  
“Oh of course, dear. Get your rest. Did you eat anything for supper?” She asked after him as he disappeared up the steps.  
“No, I'll be fine, thanks.” John called back.  
As John's footsteps receded, Mrs. Hudson poured a cup of tea for Sherlock. She added just milk (as he always took his tea) and slid his drink on a saucer to him. He took it gratefully and nodded his thanks.  
“I think John will feel better now that you're back,” Mrs. Hudson remarked, stirring a lump of sugar into her own cup. “He's been a bit blue without you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long. My official update days are going to be Saturdays or Sundays, depending on what's going on.  
> I put my little Reichenbach theory in there c: this is probably going to be the only time it's mentioned, but I hope it's not too stupid.  
> Thanks for reading/reviewing/kudos-ing. It's much appreciated. I love you guys like John loves jam. Stay safe.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh goodness, this is my first fanfiction that I've published to the Internet, and I'm really a bit on the nervous side about it. Hopefully, you'll like it.  
> I borrowed the description of Sherlock's eyes being verdigris from Performance in a Leading Role by Mad_Lori ( http://archiveofourown.org/works/225563/chapters/341590 )
> 
> Feedback is welcome, I'll likely update every three or four days (unless something comes up, which you'll be notified about. And if I'm late on updates, I promise to apologize profusely), which may change due to school. Thank you for reading.


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